One of the strangest cases in the annals of crime - a
pizza delivery man who robbed a bank by making threats with a bomb locked
to his neck - is getting more bizarre with each new twist.

FBI agents now say that the bomb which killed Brian Douglas
Wells, 46, in Erie, Pennsylvania, is unusual in the United States, and
that they have found a second weapon connected to the plot.

FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said the device was of a kind
he had heard of only once, in Bogota, Colombia. It was attached to Wells
with a metal collar and lock that FBI officials did not believe was manufactured
commercially.

Mr Crowley also said that the second weapon found was
'unique', while refusing to describe it further.

Investigators were still trying to determine whether
Wells was a willing participant in the bank robbery on Aug 28.p> The
robbery began when an anonymous caller ordered two small pizzas from Mama
Mia's, the pizza shop where he had worked for the past several years.

Wells drove the food out in his car. The address turned
out to be a desolate, fenced hill near a television transmitter.

An hour later, at 2.40pm, Wells appeared at a nearby
bank demanding money and claiming to have a bomb around his neck.

He gave two handwritten notes, nine pages in all, to
a teller. One contained threats to the bank. The second was addressed to
the robber.

After the teller gave Wells an undisclosed amount, he
retreated to his car and drove off with the cash. Minutes later, Pennsylvania
state police arrested him.

When he was surrounded and handcuffed, Wells told police
that he had a bomb strapped to him and that someone - he apparently did
not say who - had started a timer on the bomb and forced him to rob the
bank.

Television cameras caught him sitting cross-legged in
front of a squad car, shouting to police.

While waiting for a bomb squad to arrive, the device
exploded. The shock of the blast caused lethal damage to Wells' heart,
leaving a stamp-sized impression on his chest.

Federal agents and police detectives have canvassed dozens
of businesses in the industrial sections of this north-west Pennsylvania
factory town since then, trying to find a machine shop capable of rigging
up the collar.

A police search of Wells' rented shack turned up no drill
bits, metal parts or other suspicious material.

Earlier this summer, rebels in Colombia were accused
of using such a necklace bomb to try to extort money from a Venezuelan
rancher.

The man's attackers threatened to detonate it in 72 hours
unless they received the equivalent of US$187,500 (S$313,000), but Colombian
and Venezuelan secret police were able to disarm the bomb.

A similar bomb killed two in Bogota, Colombia, in 2000.

The suspect

In the transient fraternity of pizza delivery men in
Erie, Pennsylvania, Brian Douglas Wells was a lifer.

The quiet, seemingly contented man had spent years tooling
through blue-collar neighbourhoods with the back seat of his car piled
high with pizza boxes. He had worked at several shops, unfurrowed by ambition
or stress.

'Brian was happy with what he had,' said former co-worker
Jim Sadowski. 'This is something he could never have dreamed up.'